There seem to be multiple mechanisms compensating for imperfect, lossy memory. "Dreaming" is another band-aid on inability to reliably store memory without loss of precision. How lossy is this pruning process?
It's one thing to give Claude a narrow task with clear parameters, and another to watch errors or incorrect assumptions snowball as you have a more complex conversation or open-ended task.
>What a great way to summarize LLM behaviour in 2026
Well they have been trained on words spoken by humans and that has been a human behaviour since time immemorial. E.g.: "I do not agree with you that you were wrong. I do apologize for my strong disagreement but we actually do need your continued guidance desperately."
> It's why for example occupy wallstreet was such a laughable failure.
This claim is enormous. I would instead argue that the movement lacked cohesiveness because it basically complained about too large a set of (correctly identified as interconnected) issues and lost momentum because the surface was too large.
That said, I agree w your point about a face being important. Even in software, where tech can speak for itself, we see this heavily: Torvalds, Matsumoto, van Rossum, Jobs,
Rebuttal: we are yet to see this actually materialize beyond the theoretical fantasy. We have seen this with computers and internet already: the supposedly democratic technology consolidated in a few platform monopolies.
Housing prices are not binary: they have skyrocket in every major city and city-adjacent suburb. The middle class has consistently declined since the 70s.
It's also unlocking economic value that was impossible to realize in the old model. If you're sitting around your house with nothing to do for an hour you can now earn money in ways you couldn't before.
Fungibility means anything can be framed as economic value. Prisoner labour is also unlocking economic value, as is child labour.
Also who are these non-theoretical people who in this economy can afford to sit around but are suddenly economically motivated by gig economy offerings?
A laughable concept; absurd on its face. Just like the idea that uber is just suburban mums taking one or two trips on the way back from school.
It will absolutely be a full time, below minimum wage job that desperate people do. The same as uber, delivery drivers, and the entire rest of the gig economy
To me it's a typical symptom of a bad economy. If you go to any third world country you'll see such jobs easily. People just gathering scraps to make ends meet because getting money is hard. If it were really "their own terms" they wouldn't do that kind of job at all.
DoorDash lobbies heavily against laws that would regulate labor, or classify its workers as “employees” and thus require they be covered by the minimal protections our country offers.
The question is what happens if these sorts of micro-contract work arrangements are outlawed... is the expectation that these businesses will instead hire these people full time, thus increasing full time employment?
Maybe, although it seems unlikely. These sorts of tasks aren't going to be worth most companies hiring someone to do it full time. Instead, the work simply won't be done and the business will just be a little less efficient and responsive.
The other alternative is that someone would start a specialized service providing each of these types of tasks, and hire full time workers to do the work, and then contract out the services directly.
Is that better for the workers? Maybe for some, they will have full time employment. But will they make more money? Maybe, but now there is a new company extracting profit, with overhead and all the related costs.
Is that a better world for the average person? I don't know. I just don't think the answer is as simple as saying DoorDash obviously makes it worse.
To be fair, it’s not really their fault that there are people who want to treat work that normally would be considered a way to pick up a few bucks during free time as a full time career.
Sure, go ahead and make fast food delivery a highly regulated line of work that pays $30/hour with benefits. Just don’t be surprised when it no longer becomes economically viable for DoorDash to continue operating.
DoorDash not being able to continue operating doesn’t bother me one bit. They aren’t curing cancer, and a society with fewer food delivery options based on extorting poor people to turn their vehicle’s equity into less cash than it’s worth will still be a fine society. But I would be perfectly fine if they continued to exist and simply provided some basic guarantees like subsidized healthcare for their employees.
A lot of that is about medical insurance. Employers generally have to offer subsidized health plans to full-time employees. If we could break that policy linkage between employment and health plan coverage then it would reduce the importance of classifying workers as employees versus independent contractors.
If the politicians are bought out by evil DoorDash's lobbying, why don't the voters just vote the politicians out? Do you have any evidence of a politician voting against their constituents' interests for personal gain?
Ignoring the easy second line, the answer to the first line is: we have two political parties in the US. What if neither are doing what the voters want?
Then people should stop being dumbfucks and engage in local (which are frequently non-partisan) and state elections and primaries, and stop pretending that "the president didn't fix everything and make this a socialist utopia, so both parties suck" is a useful or vaguely intelligent criticism.
In a certain Euroland country an analogous delivery company just awards the driver minimum hourly payment on certain agreed before hours if they're clearly working but circumstances had them earn less. Minimum wage requirements stifle nothing.
If only there was some other kind of employment model where people had regular shifts and they were paid consistently and transparently. Unfortunately I also do my office work by logging into an app at 6AM every day and bidding on a white collar job for a mystery amount of time and money
The fallacy starts with an extreme argument to hook people (the $2B number in the headline) but then retreats to a different argument when the hook is shown to be questionable or wrong.
I do not support this law and I’ve been a spoken critic of age verification on HN. However I think articles like this are not helping the cause. They’re so easy to disprove that they become strawman arguments for the other side. Opponents can dismiss their critics are liars because headlines like this $2B number are so easily shown to be false.
There is a significant majority of people in Canada who not only vocally decided to not go to US but discourage their friends from doing so too. People have judged me for driving through the states.
Last year we cancelled a planned US vacation, this year we didn't even think about it. Going back to Europe two years in a row. I don't give a fuck about tariff policy of our supposed "friends" but when our "friend" repeatedly threatens our independence and sovereignty, no thanks. Not going to step into the USA for a long time.
I surprised more US folks dont visit Canada, its amazing, much safer, and cheaper for them because of the exchange difference. Im guessing they see prices in CAD ($), and think its more expensive, but not realizing that $1 of theirs buys $1.35 CAD.
It's probably just that it doesn't feel like there's much to "get" there.
If you go south you get sun and beaches. The coastal regions of Canada will be comparable to the coastal regions of New England and the Pacific Northwest, so there's no need to go all the way there if that's the sort of beach you're looking for.
Likewise your outdoors, your cities and restaurants and museums are all going to be about the same as the options available in the US, just further away. It's not really "exotic".
We don't really have the same emigrant relationship with Canada; my grandfather's family spent a couple generations in Canada, but my mother only found out about it after he died. He considered his family to be Irish and to have come from Ireland; that they came to the US via a couple of generations spent in New Brunswick was never a part of the family lore.
So there's no real "visiting the home of my ancestors" sort of feeling you'd otherwise see.
I don't know about "exotic", but for anyone living in the northeast of the US, the easiest way to visit Europe (sort of) is to drive up to Montreal/Quebec.
Or they can go to St Augustine, New Orleans, or mid Manhattan to also get that Euro-Architecture feel (sort of).
Having been to Europe, no comparison.
Nothing prepares you for walking along a city street then “oh fuck, a castle…” and learning that it is now, the city’s government building. Cool… (Stuttgart, you’re awesome)
Museums and public art galleries are notably worse in Canada, honestly.
But, I think there some unique things worth seeing for an American: The old parts of Montreal/Quebec city, and the Alberta Rockies, especially the corridor between Banff and Jasper.
It's not so much what's better as whether it's different enough to attract a significant tourist group from areas with similar attractions nearby.
Like, if you want to see a rain forest or a thousand year old Buddhist temple or a pyramid, there's not really a substitute in the continental US.
But if you've two options, where you can go to the pretty good option domestically or drive past it and continue on to the much better option in another country ... most people will be happy with the closer option, even if there's some small number of people who want the best or have seen all the closer options before and want something different or just whimsically like the idea of going to the further-away one none of their friends have been to.
Spent a delightful weekend in Quebec last month. Beautiful city, great culture, friendly people, best damn duck I have ever eaten in the a resteraunt they must having teleported from southern France
I don't visit Canada for the same reason I don't do a whole lot of touristy stuff here in the US: The travel costs aren't really _that_ much cheaper vs going somewhere more exotic like South America, Europe, Asia, etc, and it feels a bit too much like "home".
Living on the west coast, Vancouver's the easiest to get to -- I love Vancouver (and Victoria), and I've been both places several times, and I've gone to Whistler a handful of times as well, but, again, it's a lot like where I grew up in Seattle.
I really do want to visit Montreal sometime, but I also want to visit Chicago and Memphis and a lot of other "domestic" locations that I somehow never find the time for.
Also, when you grow up in a country you have a lot of local knowledge from culture, friends, television, education, so we just know a lot more about domestic places we haven't (yet) visited. Plus, a substantial number of people don't have passports. We used to be able to visit Canada easily without one, now we cannot.
Montreal is the exception to the rule about Canada not being differentiated enough from the US to encourage tourism. It really is quite different than anywhere in the US, it’s more like going to a funny speaking part of France without having to travel so far. They also mostly speak English, which makes it a bit less exotic but more convenient.
Canada is great. Montreal feels like a stylish and fun European city.
As a film lover, I've been to the Toronto film festival many times, it's an unmatched experience--so many things to see, and watch films with a very engaged festival crowd just makes them better. (In the same way, even if you don't love Star Wars, going on opening weekend, with the most enthusiastic fans, makes the experience better.) And given that nearly half of Toronto's population was born outside of Canada, it makes even New York feel a little parochial.
With a few possible exceptions, Canada isn't really cheaper for US tourists. They get more CAD for their US dollars, but most prices in Canada are scaled up accordingly, so it ends up being pretty much the same or more expensive.
I think there are some parts of Canada worth visiting from the US:
* Montreal - it's a big-ish city, without piss in the subways. Also the restaurant scene is good, and the old town is worth seeing.
* Quebec City - again, the old town is worth seeing. There's not much else in the US/Canada like it.
* Alberta Rockies - The corridor between Banff and Jasper is beautiful. Also, Waterton is decent. It's right across the border from Glacier NP in Montana, but less crowded. And for skiers, the Alberta Rockies also probably had the best snow in North America this past year.
> I surprised more US folks dont visit Canada, its amazing, much safer, and cheaper for them because of the exchange difference.
1. A lot of people can't afford vacations right now
2. For people in the US, socially and culturally, there's not much of a "drive" or desire to visit Canada. I've worked for Canadian companies, etc. I've never once in my entire life heard somebody talk about visiting Canada. It's always someplace warm and tropical or it's Europe or Asia.
Visiting Quebec from the East Coast is great. Driving distance, plus Montreal and Quebec City are both different enough to feel like you’ve gone somewhere different. Plus the people are just really nice.
If you mean North East US, that whole area is a different thing. You guys (US NE + Eastern Canada) are practically neighbors compared to Miami, Houston, or Los Angeles folks :) Also probably more used to the cold!
Quick question about US folks traveling to Canada: are cars with US plates being vandalized in Canada? I was thinking to drive and stay in Vancouver for a few days but I would not want to get a graffiti on my car (or worse)
As long as you don't have a MAGA bumper sticker, I doubt it. Most Canadians have some American friends, so we're usually pretty good at separating "Americans" from "the American government".
Especially in Vancouver, most people should be pretty aware that anyone with Washington/Oregon plates (which I'm guessing is what you have) probably hates Trump more than they do.
In Vancouver specifically, they'd have issues distinguishing your car from any others on the road, because there's lots of foreign (US/Alberta) plates there for some reason (I understand it's some insurance thing). At least, that seemed to be the case when I was there recently.
No, most people recognize a government isn’t reflective of individual people and are kind. If anything you’ll be more likely to be let in on the road if you are in the wrong lane assuming you don’t know where you are going. Having said that I wouldn’t wear/sticker political messaging, namely Trump and MAGA given current realities, but really of any type.
I've never understood why somebody behind me on the road would care at all about what my political views were anyway. I guess I get it during an election, maybe (in a grammar school "inventor contest" which happened to be during the 1980 US presidential election, I invented a bumper sticker sleeve that attaches to your car, so you could swap out political bumper stickers after your candidate lost. I didn't win the contest.) But in the end I don't really understand putting any sort of social signaling of any kind on my cars, though it seems hard to avoid even by just the kind of car you drive.
Closer to topic, I've always thoroughly enjoyed my trips to Canada, and can't imagine why people think "it's just like the US, so why bother" as seems to have been expressed ny some in this thread. I somewhat recently drove up to Roberval, Quebec from my home in New England, and it was absolutely nothing like the US. I find the rural Quebecois very odd, refreshingly direct, and enjoyable to hang out with.
I'd take that election atmosphere and then recognize Canadians are living in a charged environment with cost of living/quality of life/economy changing and uncertainty. Many Canadians see Trump & his with the de facto support he has (in that nothing has been done about it despite posturing) as a threat and root cause of much of it. Not all of that's true or due to him or the US. But it means nobody down there will meaningfully protect Canada with his threats/economic war if they can't even block his domestic chaos. Folks are happy to see other folks and appreciate visitors but they also recognize a threat. Just like in America. So agree why publicize foreign political views.
Perhaps in the white vs black experience lens that most of my US friends seem to see every world conflict through to relate to their own history (wild conversations about Middle Eastern politics there being racial), it's like wearing something racially inflammatory to the wrong neighbourhood. If one's blowing $$,$$$ on bespoke fly in tourism you can probably get away with it with a polite topic change as tourism keeps food on the table, but park a Trump sticker on a residential street I'd be surprised if even in the nicest neighbourhood there isn't some damage to it. Likely from a teenager goofing off with friends in the current environment.
To the second individually most Americans are nice in my experience, if you are seen as a person and not anonymous in the crowd. I've had a family member get a rifle leveled at them for stepping over a property line in the US where clearly they weren't seen as a fellow human... what can I say to that or the normalization of it.
We recently went to Niagara falls on the Canadian side and it was fun. Canadian sales taxes and fees took some of the currency difference, but yes we had a decent deal on a steak dinner in the tourist trap.
So this. A year ago my wife and I did a road trip up into Canada (Kelowna BC region). It was a new experience. I’ve been up into Canadian provinces many times (20+ over the years), but because of the anti Canadian rhetoric that Trump and company were putting out at the time, I was embarrassed and eager for people to not actually know I was from the states. I was hyper aware of the Washington state license plates on our car. I have never felt that way before. Ashamed to be an American. Afraid of the association it implied. Anxious that people would be reductionist, unable to realize that I was not just an American, but a frustrated helpless American.
The Canadian people I met as we travelled were all amazing. I was humbled that they took time to talk. And were less interested in identity than issues. One older gentleman, who saw us pull into the McDonalds with Washington plates approached us in the foyer and wanted to tell me that despite what others might say, I was welcome there. It was on one hand kinda weird and at the same time really touching.
I just saw this recent survey about whether or not people view their fellow citizens as morally good. Canada ranks first, with 92% respondents answering affirmatively.
It's not hard to imagine people like these extending their good will to foreigners, even "hostile" ones.
In contrast, "The United States is the only place we surveyed where more adults (ages 18 and older) describe the morality and ethics of others living in the country as bad (53%) than as good (47%)."
This is true in most scenarios, and the opposite is also true – that Americans are famously friendly, and even though Canadians may not want to visit to make a point, I think even they would agree that most day to day interactions they'd have would be warm and welcoming.
There might be a bit more hockey ribbing for the next few weeks, but I know there's a ton of respect for Canada's team.
At the end of the day, the idea of "My problem is with the government, and not the people" is as old as time.
I am also a Canadian who has decided not to visit the US until further notice, and honestly, I'm sad about it.
In my 20+ years of regularly travelling to the States, I've almost always had great interactions with the people I've met in all parts of the US I've visited, and I've been all over. "Warm and welcoming" is a very good description.
I think you’re all within your right to keep your distance from us. Our disgraceful leadership, even if it doesn’t accurately represent our people, we must suffer under it but no reason for you to do the same. We just hope you’re aware it’s only a few more years and we can begin to heal the whole relationship with more sane leaders that hopefully do see the strength and value in a positive relationship with a northern neighbor.
If not, please send help or accept our political refugees because we will have become permanently screwed if this behavior continues past our current orange phase.
Elections are not good sample of our collective values. The approval rating is quite low and is probably a better measure.
But when it comes to elections, first, somehow “we” get 2 bad choices every time. This last time, I personally feel they were 2 incredibly terrible choices. Then the fumbling from the other side basically assured orange man’s victory. It was a disaster of an election (but sadly appropriate as it seems like every thing we do is a disaster now.)
We also have a low voter turnout. So the result isn’t really complete and probably has some bias.
We also have an electoral college which means the winner can have less than 50% of the popular vote and win.
I could probably go on but I feel the point has been made that election outcomes are not the proxy you think
If "both sides" are equally bad, then both sides equally represent the people, no?
> I could probably go on but I feel the point has been made that election outcomes are not the proxy you think
The purpose of a system is what it does. There are not many grassroots efforts to change the many negatives you listed. Tacit approval - whether through nor voting or not fixing what is broken - does not lessen culpability. The outcome is still accurate representation on the aggregate.
If 4 housemates always have a dirty kitchen, it's a reflection on all of them. It may fall short of their ideals, or they can blame Bob for not doing dishes, not fixing a problem whose root they know is an indictment, not an excuse.
Most Canadians are visiting Hawaii and California, not Arkansas and South Dakota, so the point still stands for the states most people are going to. (Although Florida and Arizona are both pretty popular destinations too, which somewhat contradicts my point)
South Dakota actually has a few decent tourist attractions west river: (Mt Rushmore, Badlands, Crazy Horse).
With its proximity to Canada, and relative cheapness, likely pulls in quite a few tourists from up North.
One additional South Dakota attraction (although lessening interest as of late) is how much hunting/fishing is available, and how much the community is interested in the ‘visiting’ hunter.
Oh, I wasn't aware of that, thanks! I guess I was only thinking of warmer places, since that's where I tend to travel to. I personally live a bit too far north to drive to the US (in a reasonable amount of time), so I completely forgot that the US is close enough for a summer road trip for most Canadians.
Same has been true the 2-3 times I've visited Canada. I don't think that'll change. I remember how things got pretty heated during the run up to the Iraq War. And we hope that the friendship will endure.
Ironically in my experience anyways, this is true more so in parts that are more strongly "Canada should be the 51st state" politically. e.g. the south, where I find day to day interactions with people there are much more friendly than say California.
Washington has more in common with BC than with Alabama or Florida. Except for the Pig War, which was more of a disagreement between neighbors over their fence line.
> Short of voting, protesting and getting into arguments with MAGA people I don't know what else I can effectively do.
Also:
Give money to organizations that are doing the work on your behalf. Lawsuits are still important.
Call or write your reps *frequently*. They use software to automatically tabulate voter positions. (And they look at it--they want to keep their jobs!)
I’ve been making an effort to visit Canada and Europe more instead of domestic US tourism. I used to go to Florida multiple times a year. Not anymore and you know, Canada is such a great place, am there right now on vacation.
So I live in Florida. People leave Canada this time a year because of the weather. If anything, go further south to Central America. Costa Rica and Panama are safe countries.
They leave it because they have probabled lived in a winter climate their entire lives and want a change / have gotten older and it's harder on their bodies.
If you've never experienced a real winter or done neat things like winter sports then visiting Canada in the winter is a great travel experience.
You're getting downvoted, but people should be aware that arguments like this sometimes only reinforce the other party's position in their minds. My recommendation is also not to bother with those debates (unless you're doing it to find deficiencies in your own position).
There are elements of truth to this, but then there's other elements (here) who have said that we somehow owe it to people to argue in good faith with them when they are talking of (the ones I've personally had mentioned): post-birth abortion ("in several Democrat states, abortion is legal up to one month post birth!"), adrenochrome harvesting, etc.
That it was my/our fault such views propagate because we're not "willing to understand their perspectives".
The thing is, their perspectives are a lie. And in many cases, they know they're a lie, they just don't. fucking. care.
So they can go online and whine about being dismissed or criticized, or pat each other on the back for "knowing the truth". There's a subset who, I'm sure, see such things as actual literal truth, and that's a different issue altogether, but not sure it's my responsibility to solve, or that failure to engage on my part makes the current situation "my fault".
> It's not really a choice but a demonstration of intelligence and empathy. Still, if you deliberately decide to remain ignorant, or simply fail to understand the opposition's position even despite your best efforts, it shouldn't surprise you when you also fail to convince people your position is the correct one.
Like huh? It is okay for them to be objectively dishonest, and have zero shred of empathy, curiosity for my position, but refusing to engage on a good faith basis is a failing of mine?
> Once you reach this stage, your commentary pretty much just becomes elaborate whining, which makes a poor impression of yourself and actually pushes people away from your position.
This is literally Idiocracy in the making.
If I make a poor impression on people by repeatedly shutting down their horseshit about doctors performing "abortions" up to a week or a month after birth, or that babies are being harvested in the basement of a pizza parlor for their adrenachrome, and you're more concerned about how I should be "understanding" of that perspective, again, you're also supporting the idiocracy.
No sitting member of Congress has ever been recalled and it’s almost certainly unconstitutional. Article I only outlines one way to remove a sitting representative or senator, and that’s expulsion by a vote of the chamber in which they sit
Congress is one power structure. States and cities are others. 19 states have recall procedures. The fed is much less powerful domestically without state-level support. And pulling down even a couple state reps would send a chilling message to the fed.
For me it's not about politics at all. Just the thought of going through TSA and immigration is enough to discourage me, especially when I can hop on a plane to Spain, Italy or Cyprus and face 0 inconveniences along the way.
> For me it's not about politics at all. Just the thought of going through TSA and immigration is enough to discourage me
The conditions of TSA and the immigration system are...not independent of politics (or even independent of the top tier of most divisive partisan political issues in the current American context.)
Yeah I mentioned it because I have semi-permanent home there. Luckily we left before the war started. I am just getting government SMS with warnings now.
Gah that must suck. I hope you all ride this out without mishap. It's got to be so frustrating, it's like a bunch of gangsters having it out in the street where you live.
The whole social media history and phone searching thing makes me nervous, you're one bad-taste meme about Charlie Kirk and a butt-hurt CBP agent away from a very long and painful detention process.
American here. I have to agree with this sentiment (without getting into the math of our deeply flawed election system).
The administration could not do any of this without the support of Congress, which has not wavered. That support is unwavering because those elected officials are not getting negative feedback from their voters and donors, so they have every expectation that staying this course will work out just great for them.
This administration's actions only continue with the approval of their party who put them and keep them in power.
Congress has received plenty of negative feedback from their voters. The intensity and frequency of Republican voters confronting their representatives over many administration policies (e.g., Medicaid cuts, ACA subsidy cuts, tariffs, Epstein, influence of unelected officials) when those representatives hold in-person town halls has led to representatives greatly reducing in-person town halls, replacing them with tele-town halls so they can cut off people.
It won't be. Even if the house swings to the democrat side it will be a marginal swing only, not a massive change. Who knows if the Senate will even flip at all.
Half of America loves what's happening and the other half doesn't believe the first half loves it.
Agreed but we also have to stop saying "the majority support this" or "half the country supports this" it ain't true and leads people to feel hopeless.
Yet, if we re-did the election today, we'd have the same outcome. People might not support what is happening but they will never "vote for the other guy." I personally know people who disagree with everything that's going on, but they'll still vote (R) next time "because I'm a (R)," as if it's their intrinsic physical trait like hair color.
The special elections that have been happening don't agree with this hypothesis. Dems are currently outperforming Harris by 30+ point margins even in places like Texas
This is a good analysis but I’ll say at least for me, it has been a lesser of two evils scenario. Both parties have some really crazy ideas and platforms. I loathe the two party system for this reason.
Like you will go to an election, and your choices will be
Republican candidate: "I support deporting your family, I will not only not support cleaner energy but will actively work to increase coal usage, and I think your trans cousin should be forced to transition back even if it makes them commit suicide."
Democratic candidate: "I think all of that stuff the Republican candidate said is crazy and wrong. If elected, I will strive to make all your guns illegal, so that eventually Republican-supporting institutions like the police and military, and Republican states, are the only ones with guns."
“I like taking the guns early, like in this crazy man’s case that just took place in Florida … to go to court would have taken a long time,” Trump said at a meeting with lawmakers on school safety and gun violence.
“Take the guns first, go through due process second,” Trump said.
Because you presented a dichotomy in which the Democrats are a party intent to "make all your guns illegal", yet that is not their position as a party. Indeed the last Democratic presidential nominee made very clear she owns guns and likes the 2nd amendment.
The opposite is true of Republicans: their party platform is literally "whatever Trump wants", and Trump has actually articulated circumventing the second amendment entirely by "taking guns first".
Moreover, his current administration's stance is that lawfully carrying citizens protected by the 2nd amendment who are obeying the law are at risk for summary execution if his agents feel threatened enough. This makes the 2nd amendment inoperable (no need for a second amendment at all if they can just say they were scared and kill you for having a gun).
If you're going to characterize Democrats as (a lesser) evil, at least be honest about why.
Ah yea sorry, I meant literally my guns, as in the ones I use for service rifle competition. Those guns specifically, like the practical ones, are definitely on the docket. In fact if I moved to my current state today, I wouldn't be able to bring my guns.
Yes they will allow me to have a deer rifle with a 5-10rd capacity.
Nice try, but you went on to say "eventually... police and military, and Republican states, are the only ones with guns."
So you were not talking about your guns, you were talking about all guns. You can amend your position if that's really what it is, but that's not what you said.
Ok I will endeavor to be more precise when I'm talking about modern/practical rifles, and not just like literally any gun at all.
The relevant point is that the line for gun ownership pushed by the Democrats (at least where I am) is way far away from the line for gun ownership pushed by Republicans.
And when stating that line, it strikes me as an odd position to take when I'm also simultaneously being told that Republicans are going to go even farther hard right / authoritarian/ take-over / w/e, while also keeping the fairly pro-Republican police armed to the teeth (again, with modern rifles).
Trump supporting red flag laws or not seems kinda like a distraction. Trump supporters saying they can shoot protestors is exactly what I'm pointing out - if that is what we're scared the future will hold, why push for giving up modern rifles?
Kinda goes against gun rights as being part of his platform at all. At least with the "gun control" laws they still try to maintain some gun rights. Whereas the Republican playbook now is just "oh you shouldn't be allowed to carry unless I think you're a cool person." Like that guy that got shot in MSP. He had a concealed carry permit and he was disarmed. People in Trump's administration were still saying "he shouldn't have had a gun at a protest." Where were they when we saw hundreds if not thousands of guys with AR-15's and plate carriers flanking the BLM protests?
I don't think trump has gun rights as a big part of his platform. I guess they got rid of tax stamp fees but that doesn't really mean anything.
But again, that doesn't really have much to do with what I said?
However minimal Republican support of gun rights may be, they don't have increasing gun control as a major part of their platform like the Democrats do.
Right. I realize Australia is not perfect, and from my visits back there to visit family, I know it's gotten more polarized, but when I moved to the US at 28, in the early 2000s, there was still the prevailing opinion that you could go to the pub, argue all night long with some bloke about politics while drinking beers together and still be mates, while here...
"I'd rather be dead than friends with a liberal", and such tropes.
I am not confident that is as cut and dried as you are putting forth, there have been massive swings in heavily red districts the other way for special elections in the last few months and Republican polling is abysmal.
Right, turning out your people is huge, and it becomes more rather than less important as margins are thinner which is a consequence of trying to gerrymander a thinner majority.
If Republicans turn 2 places they win by 130:100 plus a big city they lose by 100:130 into three they expect to win by 120:110 then if on the day Democrats turn out as usual but about 10% of the Republicans stay home across the board they lose all three 108:110.
My concern in the 2026 cycle is that there just won't be fair elections, and so this doesn't end up mattering.
> if we re-did the election today, we'd have the same outcome
Doubtful. The faithful will always be idiots. But around them are vast seas of folks who change their minds and even switch parties. Between foreign policy, vaccines (weirdly, not being nutter enough) and Noem turning ICE into a pageant show, a lot of Trump voters feel betrayed. It’s why the House flipping is almost a given.
"The majority" I'll grant you, but I'd say 43.4% is close enough to "half" for these purposes. It's only a touch lower than his poll numbers right before the election.
Compare with Kier Starmer, who as of this writing has not sent armed goons into his own cities, wrecked all of his international trade and tourism, alienated his allies, or once again invaded the Middle East. His approval rating is about 20%!
If you had 1000 coins and put them into two piles one of 440 and one of 560 it would be "about half"
But if your argument is that only 154 million people support this government and that's fine because if it was 174 million there'd be a problem, then sure.
Those are MUCH higher than they should be by now. It makes me wonder what the approval rating of a ham sandwich would be, and I would not be surprised if it was higher.
A ham sandwich has some strong qualities. I’m not kidding.
The president would do basically nothing for four years, which would cause some things to move slowly. But it would be a very stable environment. No random tariffs via executive order, no random wars or invasions, no governing via tweet.
Ham sandwich would maybe be one of our better presidents. Top 50%, probably.
There are hard and soft approval ratings. The soft number is the count of how many people will vote for/against in the next election. The hard number is how many want a change today, how many will support recalling thier representatives in order to force change today. In that number, the current administration has widespread support.
I'm not advocating for it, merely observing that that seems to be the way in which the USA prematurely gets rid of politicians that it does not like. It's revolting, the amount of violence in politics and >> what even banana republics get away with and that's on both sides of the aisle so I don't give a rats ass about which side you or anybody else is on.
Plenty of state-level reps can be recalled today. That noone is even trying sends the message that the population is generally OK with waiting until the next election ... an election that will be run/managed/counted by those representatives.
I love the copium. If I have 10 friends and ask all of them where they want to go for dinner and 6 say let’s have Chinese and the other 4 say let’s kill Bob and eat him, I still have a shitty friend group.
Controversial opinion, it's way more than half: 1/3 voted for the orange man, 1/3 didn't bother go to vote because "BoTh SideS ARe thE SamE!" and 1/3 tried to do the right thing.
It’s a large and incorrect assumption, and not mathing, to lump non-voters into supporters, especially when the administration is purging eligible voters.
That’s an assumption, jumping to a conclusion. It is true for some people, since some people say it out loud, but it is not true for everybody, and calling it “unambiguous” is an unsupportable claim.
To the degree some non-voters say they don’t care, that’s still deeply complicated, enough that even taking someone’s word for it is a bad idea. Non-voters in the U.S. are not uniformly distributed, and thus there is evidence suggesting that not caring is already a function of class, race, education, gender, and age, among other things.
If you actually care about voting and about the truth, it does yourself a disservice to jump to a assumed conclusion that all non-voters are saying something unambiguous, that they’re all saying the same thing, that they all have informed choice, that they understand all the tradeoffs and implications, and that they really are fine with any outcome regardless of what they say.
Eligible voters should absolutely be lumped in as implicit supporters. Disenfranchised voters have been made ineligible so should not have been in the statistic.
Rhetorically: why is it "implicitly approve" instead of "implicitly disapprove?"
The only thing you know about them is that they did not vote. Even using your assumption of their beliefs ("both sides are the same"), that position is generally affiliated with disapproval, not approval.
This is extremely lazy and unrigorous reasoning that could be extended dishonestly to any number of things. Oh, you aren't protesting genocides? You must support them then. Oh, you're not helping feed hungry people in poor countries? Guess you support child starvation. Oh, you're not contributing to the Rust ecosystem? ...............
None of those are comparable to the simple and quick act of voting against a treasonous candidate for US president.
This wasn’t a bad candidate vs worse candidate situation, it was someone who supports breaking apart the trust and foundation of the country solely for personal gain versus someone who at least believed in providing a veneer of civility.
signing an online petition is also a quick act, and the same reasoning you’re using would follow. you’re almost getting at what’s wrong with your specific voter argument though - in many, many states, 1 or more of the following can apply:
big states that always vote one way like CA where a non vote is the same as a blue vote
states where voting is such a tedious process that opting out is a reasonable choice, even if it doesnt place a big burden otherwise
states with voter id laws, often large chunks of the eligible population do not have an id
disabled people, people with hardship, etc., felons
It’s really weird logic to lump massive chunks of the general population these things apply to in with the same people that explicitly support this. It also ignores the fact that these elections often come down to a few thousand or fewer votes in a handful of battleground states. Not voting in those places, I would tend to agree more with the gist of your point, but it is no where near a big chunk of the population.
If someone looks at (admittedly shitty) candidates like Harris and decides she's as bad as Trump it means the implicitly approve of Trump. You need a mushy brain to not see that there's shit (Harris) that there's Trump, orders or magnitude worse.
The democrats are complicit in genocide. Trump is attacking allies too, but they’re both criminal. The main difference is “worthy and unworthy” victims.
I don't really know how to respond politely to downplaying genocide. What I can say is that it is becoming accepted that Kamala Harris lost in part because she refused to change genocide policy. If you want to win, you should start taking it seriously.
My swing-state vote was stupendously easy to get. (a) don't commit a genocide (b) give voters something big and material like free healthcare (c) don't cover up COVID and Long COVID
> I don't really know how to respond politely to downplaying genocide.
Sorry. I don't intend to downplay genocide and I don't want to come across that way.
What I'm trying to critique is (so far as I can read it from your post) your inability to see that two things can be the same in one respect - but apparently not notice that one is much bigger than the other.
If it helps, I'm not American and don't have any option to 'win' as far as US politics goes. I think you are right that Kamala Harris was facilitating genocide. But I also think you are wrong to not take into account that Donald Trump is a whole order of magnitude worse.
> My swing-state vote was stupendously easy to get. (a) don't commit a genocide (b) give voters something big and material like free healthcare (c) don't cover up COVID and Long COVID
So they voted for the side committing genocide and who sees free healthcare as an atrocity in itself to everything the US stands for? What did the Dems do to "cover up" COVID? You know versus "It's nothing worse than the flu, it'll be over in two weeks" while privately being aware that neither of those things were true?
I mean, they didn't do that (and I think the DNC, DWS and their ilk have a lot to answer for the current state of affairs), but your "swing state, stupendously easy to get" decided instead to vote for the side that openly doubled down on those things, not really a ringing endorsement for expectations of voters there.
That's before we even get to the general issue of an electoral populace so ignorant of the political landscape that the number one search on Election Day on Google was "Did Biden drop out?"
I voted third party. If the Democrats want my vote, they have to represent something resembling human values.
Look around you, COVID is still everywhere and the scientific literature is pretty dismal. The Democrats lagged about 6 months behind the republicans, now most people believe what was far-right in 2020. It's true fewer people are dying, but most people do just think it's a cold. The democrats shut down reporting, didn't fight for worker protections, and basically were most invested in the economy over health. They also were never clear about the airborne method of transmission and so people ended up believing masks didn't work because they would wear a surgical mask and still got sick. They didn't "follow the science".
Same. We had two month-long trips planned and canceled them both. I realize California is not exactly “enemy territory” or whatever but we’ll spend our money elsewhere.
I mean you say that, but as someone with family in California the issue isn't the general citizenry it's that ICE and border people aren't general citizenry.
If the system decides to screw you over, that your average Cali resident disapproves doesn't stop you being in a holding cell for weeks.
Going through CBP is such a nightmare, even as a US citizen, I also think twice about going on international vacation. I hate entering my own country, every other country is so much easier, a deep sense of dread enters every time I have to go back to the USA because I know I will be fucked with by the border police.
I try not to let them influence my behavior too much, but at the end of the day, getting thrown in immigration jail on false accusations (yes happened to me despite presenting US passport) or detained for 12+ hours (also happened several times) puts constraints on vacation plans.
Really depends where your entry point is. They’ve moved to digital gates which have made actual cbp interactions basically a thing of the past. Last couple times I didn’t even have to take my passport out.
Likewise, I used to live in Germany, now in California, I used to get a fairly steady stream of old friends in town to visit, but not anymore, they essentially to a person refuse to come to the U.S.
I took a taxi ride from Niagara (ON) to Buffalo. The Canadian driver really was leery of Americans and I apologized for everything. It's a dang shame, and I don't blame you all for feeling this way.
I couldn't arrange it via app, so it seemed impossible at first. However, I asked the bellman at the hotel, and he called his taxi driver friend. I kinda overpaid from what I can tell, $100 american, but he just drove us across the bridge, passports were checked super quickly by the American side, and we continued on to Buffalo in about 40 minutes total.
Do you Americans realize it means absolutely nothing to us when one of you "apologises for" Americans? You do that for you, not us. It's weird and gross. You don't speak for Americans. Americans speak for Americans, and the message is loud and clear.
Someone mentioned how they had to go to America for the job, and everyone worried for his safety. His answer: Don't worry, it is South America. Everyone felt better for him, then we all wondered how 1 year could cause such a flip.
The power of media influence over people's minds. People will think whatever they are told to think by their media rulers. They will feel whatever they're told to feel.
That's all fine and good until your plane has to land in the United States for a medical emergency. If you are really concerned about this fly Air France through Bogota.
I was surrounded by Canadians in Arizona (BC, Calgary) and Florida (Ontario) this winter. I could not tell a difference in the RV world (2021-present) which I thought was odd given all the boycotts I read about online.
I'm not Canadian, and I usually visit the US for business. While being a Muslim often means enduring the humiliation of being singled out because of my name by CBP, I'm comfortable enough that I could travel private for my US trips, which means the entire CBP experience is completely different (friendly chitchat and conversation as the CBP officers check our passports inside the aircraft itself). But with ICE roaming the streets, I'm not taking any chances of being deported to Libya or El Salvador or something. Which in turn means that we have severely halted all of our US investments, simply because I am unable to visit the country (!).
My mom's condo complex in Hawaii used to have many owners from Canada. Over the last year, the number of units for sale has probably 10x'd from previous years.
I have no doubt that they are great people. That wasn't in question. I asked if they are allies. Do you find that they support and integrate into your local culture, and support preserving that culture? Or do they bring Middle Eastern culture and expect Middle Eastern values to be expressed in your country?
Less people visit the US because it's do damn expensive. That's the biggest reason for most people. Most people don't have any principles, they go where they can afford. Last year I was in NYC and Miami beach and was shocked how expensive everything was. (I know these are expensive places but that's where most tourists go - they don't visit Kansas)
Those people didn't already come to the USA for starters, NYC has been crazily expensive for years.
There are many reasons people might have, none are good. There is for instance also a risk factor of being harassed and detained by ICE. Cruelty and incompetence are a feature of authoritarian governance, not a coincidence. So anyone going there takes a kind of risk. As has been shown, even Europeans aren't safe from the whimsical paramilitary.
EDIT: I don't think that tourism is a big factor, but as I said elsewhere, it could well be the proverbial canary in the coal mine.
The hotel booking websites show pricing trend data and rooms are largely “low price” currently. March isn’t exactly high season for California but it’s an interesting indicator.
Your chances of running into trouble are pretty close to zero unless you're wearing a 51st State t-shirt or something.
I work with a a decent number of Americans who either moved here or are here temporarily, and I can't say there has been any tension. I think most Canadians who are staunchly anti-US are also aware that plenty of Americans aren't happy with their government. I can't say I've seen any vitriol towards the average American person.
I doubt you would have any issue at all travelling in almost all of Canada. Alberta might be a bit more US friendly.
You don't need the bumper sticker, or to apologize. As long as you aren't wearing MAGA gear or being bombastic about Trump, people won't really think much of it. I assume anyone visiting Canada isn't a Trump supporter anyways, as most polling shows they've decided they don't like Canada.
Canada? Count most of the world, and whole western world (minus US for the pedants but oh boy do US expats have juicy opinions on their homeland).
I live in Switzerland, and literally everybody I talk to in our circles - bankers, doctors etc. despises US right now. The idea of going there as a tourist is immediately laughed at or met with puzzled look. Professional reasons or conferences are not even brought up, its automatic no and employers usually don't even try suggesting those.
We ourselves with kids wanted to do the trip either this or next summer, but hell will freeze sooner. Some meager +-10k from us, I know just a drop in the ocean but there could have been many such drops. Other, less hostile economies deserve these way more.
Not just Canada. Everyone is wondering if they'll be arrested and thrown in the gulag. Obviously the chances of this happening are fairly small, but if you have an alternative non-fascist country to visit, why take the chance?
Well - if you are canadian and give money to the USA then you kind of also help sustain Trump's hostile anti-Canadian rhetoric and agenda. Most Canadians live in the southern part of Canada, aka close to the USA and depend economically a lot on the USA, but increasing that economic dependency more than it already is, is not a good strategy for all Canadians. I also think Canadians should get a small nuclear arsenal, probably 25% compared to what France has (France has about twice as many people; Canada only needs a small deterrence that would drive the cost of any country being hostile against it. Not many countries can be really hostile to Canada.)
Absolutely, my partner would love to visit national parks south of the border this summer but we decided we'd much rather spend our money in our own economy for the time being. That's not even considering the risk getting snatched by immigration anywhere in the country.
There’s a decent chance the national parks will still be there in a couple years anyway.
Well, I guess, they might have been auctioned off to some billionaire at that point so… the tickets will probably be pricier but the facilities should be shiny and new.
If they choose to open them to the public, that is. Hopefully that billionaire doesn't just open it to their friends and us commoners don't get to use it.
"spend our money in our own economy" - a common fallacy about economies. Spending money is how you take/consume resources from an economy.
If you spend money in Canada, then you are taking stuff from Canadians. If you spend your money in the US, then you are taking stuff from Americans.
You might wonder what happens at the limit - why don't Canadians just spend all their money in the US and take all America's stuff (just a thought experiment)? Because currencies adjust. Canadians would need US Dollars to buy stuff in the US, and as more and more Canadians try to do that, the exchange rate would change to devalue the Canadian Dollar against the US Dollar, effectively making things more and more expensive for Canadians until they are forced to get their stuff elsewhere.
When you spend Canadian dollars at a business owned by a Canadian, you're sending that owner and the Canadian government your money, in exchange for their goods or services, normally at a surplus of value for them. You are 'helping' them; you are 'investing' in the Canadian economy. You are justifying the existence of their business and the jobs of the people who work there.
Especially insofar as you're making this choice versus American options, you are putting money into the hands of Canadians rather than Americans. This is the underlying concept behind boycotts and voting with your dollars or feet.
Same here in Europe. I've had people volunteer to tell me they had canceled their trips and that 'as far as they're concerned that includes the rest of the future for them'. I think a lot of people were willing to forgive the USA for 'Trump 1' even if they did not understand it. But this is different.
We did not travel to the US during Trump's first presidency either.
That said, I do think some people are doing things for the wrong reasons and there is some manipulation of the masses at play here. One example is I expect most people don't really understand the tariff situation between Canada and the US and that most goods are still exempt from taxes and the agreements hold. I think some people want to punish the US for tariffs that don't exist.
As a Canadian we should push back strongly against attacks on our sovereignty. We should also be somewhat concerned about the direction our neighbor is going in general. But it's also a reality that the US is very very close to us both geographically, culturally, and economically. That's not going to change. It's not an "enemy country" despite their very questionable choice of leaders. I think the correct long term direction is open borders and open trade, somewhat like the EU, and we shouldn't lose sight of that because a bad leader is in place today.
It's very weird to me to see all the focus on US policies in the Canadian discourse while not enough focus on Canada. That feels like political distraction.
In 2025 there were about 18M personal vehicles and about 300K pedestrians crossed from Canada into the US. So yes, it's down (like 10%) but it's still a lot of people. Out of those the number of people that run into problems with the "Gestapo" is approximately, within rounding error, zero. You're a lot more likely to die in a car crash or get robbed or something.
Why does everything today have to be about hyperbole? You don't want to visit the US (like me) ... well don't. You don't like Trump ... fine. You disagree with the immigration policies, enforcement whatnot... fine. But enough with this bullshit fear mongering.
I think the "elbows up" rhetoric among boomers is kind of stupid, but for safety reasons I have avoided going to the US. Otherwise I probably would have travelled 5-6 times in the past year.
Seems like many people here in Germany also don't want anything to do with the US any longer as well. I myself wouldn't go to the US, even before Trump, and recently also heard from someone else, who wants to travel around the world, that they will not be visiting the US, due to what is going on over there. Just 2 anecdotes, N=2 of course, but I can imagine many people sharing the worries or concerns about visiting the US.
Statistics Canada has over the last year shown that tourism to US from Canada is down by a lot and it's not getting better. Hell, as an anecdote, I keep seing ads on TV like: Come to Disneyland! We got rebates for canadians!
I go to Disneyland nearly every weekend and the increase in foreigners is insane. Clearly a lot of people visiting that would have been going to Florida decided on California instead.
As a Floridian who owns a unit in a condotel [1]. The property management company is outright saying that tourism is down affecting income. All of the other owners who were dumb enough to buy them as “investments” are complaining.
We don’t care because we are the only people who live there mostly year round and only leave during spring break and the summer when domestic tourism is high.
> People have judged me for driving through the states.
Meanwhile it's perfectly acceptable, if not a point of pride, for Canadians to go to Cuba, which is not only run by an actual, kleptocratic dictatorship that imprisons dissidents for decades at a time, but is also the number #1 destination in the Americas for sex tourists, including child sex tourists, with the industry even tacitly sanctioned by the dictatorship ("jineterismo").
> Cuba hasn't recently openly discussed plans to annex Canada
Neither has the US. Trump specifically disavowed that every time he was asked (by the CBC). Meanwhile Cuba sent thousands of mercenaries to kill Ukrainians on behalf of Russia.
> punish Canada economically
Frankly, even as someone who opposes tariffs as uneconomic, given Ottawa's long-standing "constructive engagement" with the regime in Havana, even after they hosted Soviet nuclear weapons pointed at the US, even while they put AIDS patients in concentration camps, and even while they ran the island as a giant, open-air prison refusing to allow anyone to leave, it's really speaks to America's forbearance that it hasn't attempted to punish Canada economically, until now.
"The only thing that makes sense is for Canada to become our cherished Fifty First State. This would make all Tariffs, and everything else, totally disappear. Canadians’ taxes will be very substantially reduced, they will be more secure, militarily and otherwise, than ever before, there would no longer be a Northern Border problem, and the greatest and most powerful nation in the world will be bigger, better and stronger than ever."
"If Canada merged with the U.S., there would be no Tariffs, taxes would go way down, and they would be TOTALLY SECURE from the threat of the Russian and Chinese Ships that are constantly surrounding them."
90% of Canadians live within 100 km of the U.S. border, it's not much different than traveling elsewhere in Canada.
Granted, as someone who lives ~40 km from the border, I'm broke and can't afford to travel, but I'm also avoiding the U.S. and have been further than 100 km from home on a number of occasions in the past year.
Ridiculous take that Florida is expensive like it's some kind of luxury trip.
Florida was always a budget option for us. It's always been a quick, easy (you can drive), low risk break to get away from the cold. I just don't feel like dealing with CBP and random MAGAs right now to be honest. Wife is low-key stressed about the idea. I mean at best it's a hassle... so why bother?
It's one thing to give Claude a narrow task with clear parameters, and another to watch errors or incorrect assumptions snowball as you have a more complex conversation or open-ended task.
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